By the dawn of the sixteenth century, and the 1530s in particular, several Gaelic clans within the territories of Leix and Offaly faced a difficult dilemma. With the collapse of Silken Thomas FitzGerald’s rebellion in the year 1535 and the imminent prospect of an English born governor intervening in the affairs of the midlands’ territories for the very first time, Gaelic chieftains were forced to make a difficult choice; collaborate with this new administration or resist it. For certain chieftaincies, such as the FitzPatrick clan of Upper Ossory, the answer was relatively quite simple and straightforward. Essentially a no man’s …

In Notes on the Placenames of County Laoighis, Helen M. Roe, the first county librarian in Laois, suggests Emo or Iomadh means ‘emulation’ or ‘contention’. This observation, I suspect is based on the work of John O’Donovan (1806 – 1861), the Gaelic scholar and antiquarian. In 1824 the Ordnance Survey was established to survey or map the island of Ireland for the purposes of taxation. As part of the work, local place names were corrected and authenticated. In 1830, John O’Donovan was employed as a field-worker, while other field workers worked under his direction. Together, they compiled the Ordnance Survey …

On Wednesday 10th of August 2011, a remarkable find was uncovered on a bog in Co. Laois. A bog body was unearthed during peat milling at Cashel bog between Portlaoise and Abbeyleix by Jason Phelan, a Bord Na Mona worker. After over two years of analysis, it was revealed that the body was in fact over 4000 years old dating to the Early Bronze Age Period in Ireland. The news made national and international headlines, as it was clear that the find on this Laois Bog was the oldest fleshed bog body ever found in Europe. Over 100 such bodies …

It was William Patrick Ryan (1) who described the events of Portarlington in 1906 as a battle in chapter 8 of The Pope’s Green Island published six years later. There was no battle of Portarlington in the usual sense of physical combat; rather it was a struggle of authority and outrage following words spoken, or claimed to have been spoken publicly, by Portarlington’s Catholic priest Father Edward O’ Leary(2) , and defended by his curate, Father Martin Brophy (3) to the local Gaelic League. The cause was the Gaelic League’s holding of mixed classes for men and women in the town. A branch had been established in Portarlington in 1904, and …

1. The town grew up around a fort established by English settlers in 1548. In 1557 it was named Maryborough in honour of Queen Mary. 2. In October 1920, the Town Commission passed a resolution that Maryborough be renamed Portlaoise. In recent years, a local historian attributed the change of name to “a fit of pseudo-patriotism”. In 1959, Laois County Councillors were still discussing whether we were living in Maryborough or Portlaoise; Queen’s County or Laois. 3. In the mid 18th century, there were about 400 electors in the town – one of whom, as a fascinating document from 1760 …

Nestled on a low hillock approximately 500m west of the River Barrow, near Carlow Town, is the site of St. Fiacc’s monastery, in the townland of Sleaty or Sleibtach (House near the mountains) County Laois. Fiacc was undoubtedly a highly influential figure during the period of transition from Paganism to Christianity on the island. He was born to a son of a Prince from the ancient kingdom of Hy-Bairrche, mainly located in the modern day barony of Slievemargy in the Irish midlands. This kingdom was associated with the Ui Bairrche family which is a generic form of the surname O’Gorman. …